February fifth is in Finland Runeberg’s day, the National poet of Finland. As explained in a more detailed way in this post, the famous seasonal cakes with gingerbread leftovers, almonds and raspberry jam are named after him.
Well, as it happens, I find myself in possession of a 4 2/3 inch (12 cm) panettone springform (head here to discover why), so I started thinking what else could I make with this high-border-pan other than panettone, when I bumped into Saara’s cake and boom! I knew what I had to do.
Since Runeberg’s cakes are supposed to be quite moist, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem to make the cake base very thick in the panettone pan and then slice it afterwards.
Now, the original recipe would call for a couple of drops of bitter almond extract, but I couldn’t find any from the shops since all the grannies are baking these kinds of cake in this time of the year. The solution to the problem had Italian roots: Amaretto liquor. I added some Amaretto to the cake batter and still used it to moist the cake once I was assembling it and it turned out great, with just that almond-y flavor typical of these cakes.
For this cake I used basic whipped cream between layers and as a decoration, but I would recommend to use Swiss meringue buttercream or mascarpone cream if you like an even richer version!
Did you know? By opening the recipe on Yum, you are able to see the recipe in US measurements 🙂
Yum
- 100 g of gingerbread biscuits*
- 40 g of almond flour
- 40 g of wheat or rice flour
- 60 g of butter
- 1 egg
- 100 g of Greek yogurt
- 5 ml of Amaretto liquor or 2 drops or bitter almond extract
- 20 g of sugar
- 1 g of soda
- 1 g baking powder
- 1 g of vanilla sugar
- 1 g of cardamom
- 100 ml of heavy cream
- 1 g of vanilla sugar
- 50 g of raspberry jam
- 10 ml of Amaretto liquor (or almond milk) + 10 ml of water
- Preheat the oven at 180° C (350 F).
- In a blender, reduce into powder the gingerbread biscuits.
- Mix in a bowl the biscuits, the almond flour, the wheat flour and the sugar.
- Add the egg, the yogurt, the liquor and whisk till the batter will be creamy and homogeneous.
- Add the soda, the baking powder, the vanilla sugar and the cardamom and mix.
- Grease a 4¾ inch (12 cm) panettone springform pan or two normal pans and pour the batter into it/them.
- Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick won't come out of the cake clean. Let the cake cool inside the pans.
- Pour the heavy cream and the vanilla sugar into a bowl and whip it until fluffy and firm. Place the whipped into a pastry bag.
- Take out of the form the cakes. In case you used a panettone pan, cut the cake into two lengthwise and level out the top. In case you used two normal pans, level them out without dividing them any further.
- Place the first disk in a stand or a plate and moist it with the mixture of Amaretto liquor and water with the help of a brush.
- Spread half of the jam on the disk and pipe the whipped cream starting from the center and going to the borders.
- Place the second this at the top of the first, moist it, cover it with jam and pipe the rest of the cream as a decoration.
Ceramic bowl and plates: Broste Copenhagen and Círculo Ceramics | Linen towel : Son de flor | Background: Casamood’s Neutra 6.0 color 07 Petrolio by Florim | Countertop: Casamood’s #collection 01 color Dark
